We are "Green Lake & Wallingford Safe Streets," a neighborhood group principled in the vision of designing streets so people may safely and comfortably walk, bike, and play.

Our Values & Vision

We believe achieving zero traffic deaths is not only imperative, it’s readily possible. More people die from traffic fatalities every year than from gun violence. With better design, we can get there. Learn more about Vision Zero.

We believe all people deserve safe streets, no matter their age, whether you’re an 8-year-old kid or an 80-year-old grandmother. Nearly a quarter of all people cannot drive, whether it’s because they’re too young, physically unable, or just lack a driver’s license. We need to design streets for all people, and designing a street for an 10-year-old girl on bike who’s getting to soccer practice is different than engineering a street for 30-year-old driving an SUV.

We believe in climate change and the transformative power of walking, biking, and transit to address it. The number one driver of global warming pollution in the Seattle region is transportation (over half. We can reduce our carbon footprint by shifting our policies, budget, roadways, and parking lots to favor the movement of people instead of steel boxes, and shifting toward denser development that encourages shorter trips to the store, schools, playgrounds, and neighbors via walking and biking.

We believe our streets are our greatest asset for community building. The street right-of-way accounts for nearly a third of all land in Seattle — more than even our parks. By repurposing our streets for activity, whether it’s for the healthy exercises of walking, jogging, and biking, for sitting with friends in a parklet or streatery while sipping coffee next to your favorite cafe, or for opening up your neighborhood street for kids to play street hockey or basketball, we can create friendlier, more interesting, and more active neighborhoods and communities, bringing us closer together.

We treasure our parks, playgrounds, and schools. We are blessed with amazing parks: the Burke-Gilman Trail, Gas Works Park, Green Lake Park, Meridian Playground, Ravenna Boulevard, and Woodland Park, to name the largest. We believe these parks should be cherished, nurtured, and alive with activity. Parks should be both destinations for people walking and biking, and at times serve as transportation corridors themselves. Our streets around our parks, playgrounds, and schools also need to be safe with low speed zones.

We believe in inclusiveness. Traditional voices of the propertied, salaried, pensioned, and insured are heard loud and clear in the public process. While recognizing our vision and values for safer streets, we also recognize the need to intentionally uplift voices not heard in public forums. Over the past six to seven decades, real estate was tightly controlled in Wallingford and Green Lake, often limiting who can live here. As we look to the future, we envision a more diverse neighborhood with even more people, and we will give voice to those unseen and unheard individuals and families. Nearly 50% of Wallingford residents are renters, so we will also intentionally listen and give voice to their concerns and goals.

Green Lake & Wallingford Safe Streets is a member organization of the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, a coalition of 20+ neighborhood groups across Seattle that share common values in building safer streets. Formerly, Green Lake & Wallingford Safe Streets was two separate groups, Green Lake Greenways and Wallingford Greenways, before our merger in January 2018.